SILVER CITY — When his son entered his first years of school, Silver City potter Romaine Begay went from making art to teaching it, both through student teaching at Cobre High school and lessons for his son's elementary classroom.

While Begay has been making art since he was very young, he began a full-time pottery career in 2005. Since then, he's become a big name at juried art shows and fairs, both local and throughout the Southwest. He sold at this year's Autumn Harvest Festival and recently returned from the Heard Museum Indian Fair and Market in Phoenix. This weekend, Begay will be showing at the Las Cruces Arts Fair.

According to Begay, his work is a marriage of traditional Navajo designs and storytelling through contemporary clay techniques. He sees his art as a vessel through which he educates others of his Native American upbringing and the values present therein.

Eventually, this urge to educate took a more literal turn when Begay returned to Western New Mexico University, his alma mater, for his master's degree in education.

"I always knew I would do something with art," said Begay, "whether that was making it or teaching. Doing both can get pretty crazy, but I am really enjoying both."

One way he teaches is in visits to the Cynthia Nanez's classroom at Jose Barrios Elementary School where Bace Begay, 6, his son with wife Maxine, has just begun his formal education.

"My whole schedule was built around my son from when he was born to when he went to school," Begay said.

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"With me student teaching and him in school, I didn't get to see him all that much, so this helps. I really enjoy it."

Begay organizes his lessons around the students' curriculum. At a lesson earlier this month, for instance, Nanez was teaching her children about shapes. So, Begay came in with large blocks of clay and had the children cut them into basic geometric patterns — circles, triangles, squares — before he showed them how to express themselves a bit more with stamps and other tools of the trade.

Nanez and Begay weren't alone teaching the other children, though.

As he followed his dad around the classroom or went around to tables of his peers alone to help them with their clay, it was clear Bace enjoyed his father's visit as well. He would pop his head over a friend's shoulder and give them tips he's learned surrounded by clay and pottery throughout his few years. At just 6 years old, Bace is already a seasoned potter with a couple of pieces in galleries.

"I'm so happy he's taken to it and that he's had the opportunity to have access to it so soon," said Begay of his son.

Begay also student teaches through his master's program at WNMU at Cobre High School. He teaches with Cobre art teacher Sarah Cineda. Begay said they have a good art program at Cobre and that he's happy to play a role.

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